If you love me, do the obvious. Let me go.

Has it always been like this?
Or maybe we recently have come to a day and age where we love people so much that we let them go, we risk losing them forever, just because we have this wild infatuation with the world. There is not much time to watch movies (I plan to catch up over my winter break) but of the great love movies that I do see, there is normally a scene where the two tangled protagonists part ways. On purpose. Is this the romantic way to do things?

I can picture myself by an airplane terminal and then “he” (whoever “he” is) comes running up, pushing through the throngs of people, yelling that he simply cannot live without me. And then there is the choice, to stay or to go.

I think I may have started off the year wanting something similar to this. Wanting to find someone who made leaving so hard. But do I really want the pain and the heartache that comes paired with it? Do I really want to have to tell a person that I come to grow and love that I have to go off and see the world for myself? By my self. Singular.

It is tough, like all things in life. I don’t understand it. Maybe when I fall in love with the right one I will not have to roll this question around in my head. I will just know that he is worth sticking around for. My mother and I often get into this kind of debate. I say that someone should love you enough to let you go, she says that sometimes you love someone enough to decide to stay. Perhaps it is a delicate combination of both.

If we go- well then we might miss out on the greatest love and be doomed to the typical movie plot. The person writes us letters and then our evil parents hide them from us, normally in the trunk of the car or wrapped up in nice ribbon, all 365 of those letters. Our lover is so heart-broken over the distance that they unexpectedly fall in love with someone else who can console them with their grief. And we can’t ever hate the person they fall in love with, because they are always so damn nice. It just gets messy when we come back from where we have been and figure out that our feelings are still raging and wild. Or perhaps if we go, they wait, and then there comes the chance of being together.

I think our hearts are too restless to stay put. Most of us have this itching and passion to see the world and if we are held back from it then we never fully develop. We find some kind of regret to cling to. We always wonder “what if?”

To stay or to go.

I could very well be headed off to Haiti or South Africa in 2010, so does that mean I ward off any kind of love? I know that I will eventually depart, standing by terminal 17, sick to my stomach.

I think its more glamorous in movies, harder in real life. It hurts more off-screen. But it may be worth it. It may be worth it to know that someone loves you enough to wait for you. Or that someone loves you enough to ask you one question, to never leave them, to wake up every morning in their arms. The real question we must ask our selves, when we encounter this kind of love, is not whether they will let us leave but rather if we will choose to stay.